“I have felt (for many years) that there was something seriously off in the standard trade deficit concerns. When it comes to household economics, I have never worried about more coming in than going out.”
Mis-Inflation, p. 95
Misfire
“Your problem with Uncle Wyatt is not that he is protecting himself, but rather that he is not guarding himself against the real risk—the risk of becoming the kind of risk-averse person who basically paralyzes himself. The wicked lazy servant set out to protect himself in the first instance, and the one thing he did not successfully do was protect himself.”
Mis-Inflation, pp. 92-93
The Sin of Risk Aversion
“The servant who buried the talent might have been the only one of three who returned anything of financial worth to his master. But he still would have been the wicked servant.”
Mis-Inflation, p. 92
The Challenging Chapters
“Uncle Wyatt has gold under the floorboards because the government can’t print it, and he has the idea that there is an inevitable crackup coming—when the government will desperately need to print gold and won’t be able to. In other words, I don’t think many of them are thinking so much like nine to five steady-as-she-goes investors as they are thinking like someone trying to survive a mash-up between Thunderdome and the killer-bee part of the book of Revelation.”
Mis-Inflation, p. 75
It Would at Least Seem So
“So if debt is unpayable, and is steadily increasing, does there have to come a moment when the debt is repudiated?”
Mis-Inflation, p. 62
A Talent in the Ground
“A guy in a bunker with a chest full of gold might survive okay, but God put us here to thrive, not simply survive. The issue is not whether he is putting his resources into the right kind of investment, but rather whether he is becoming the right kind of man.”
Mis-Inflation, pp. 60-61
Even If the Debt Were Increasing in Real Terms
“If the government debt load is shrinking relative to the GDP, then we are moving in a direction where government spending has decreasing influence over a growing economy.”
Mis-Inflation, p. 45
Can’t Do Everything
“It seems to me that our team is really good at explaining the fact of having fallen off the skyscraper, and really bad at judging the distance to the sidewalk.”
Mis-Inflation, p. 20
Like a Balloon
“Given the amount of helium we have been pumping into the economy in recent years, it is a very real question to me why that economy hasn’t floated off yet.”
Mis-Inflation, p. 4
Pick Your Poison
“We talk about how reckless government spending really is a catastrophic thing, but how the looming catastrophe might not be what everyone was anticipating—more like carbon monoxide poisoning than a giant fireball.”
Mis-Inflation, p. vi